Salem Media -- Why Bother?

For a couple of days, I've been vaguely wondering what all the feuding between Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, or Tucker Carlson's transformation into a Qatar apologist, are all about, and I haven't found much on alt media. Then I ran into David Strom's piece yesterday, The Bizarro World of MTG, Tucker, Candace, and the Woke Right, and I came off more confused then ever.

Strom writes for Hot Air, one of more than half a dozen opinion sites, commentator channels, and aggregators owned by Salem Media, which is a puzzling phenomenon itself. These include Red State, Instapundit, Townhall, PJ Media, Twitchy, Bearing Arms, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and others. The feature they have in common is a certain level of unseriousness: the Instapundit regulars will link to policy think pieces on occasion, but then they'll go back to pitching the latest alternate history and science fiction fluff written by their cronies or reminiscing on the greatness of Robert A Heinlein.

They also link primarily to other Salem sites and writers; if you scroll through a few dozen Instapundit posts, you don't need to visit PJ Media, Hot Air, or Red State separately. This makes me wonder why they have all these different outlets -- what's the overhead of having all these separate servers, webmasters, editors, and such? And it's all so mediocre.

Take the David Strom link. It follows the Salem formula; you start any essay on any subject talking about yourself:

It took me months to understand the whole concept of "woke right," and, to be honest, I still dislike the description because it takes so long to grasp.

While I basically agree with James Lindsey's arguments, it's a branding fail. Memes should be intuitive, IMHO.

Wait a moment. Who the heck is James Lindsey, and what are his arguments? He doesn't say; he doesn't give a link. And then he goes to what must be at the top of the Salem Media style sheet: use lots of acronyms, IMHO, LMAO, ICYMI, OMG, whetever you can throw in. It gives your writing punch and pizazz! But then he gets down to the nitty-gritty, the furrowing of the brow:

So what IS the woke right, and why would I put Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Andrew Tate in that category, along with others?

"Woke" is not so much an ideology in itself, although it is easy to think so since it has been so long associated with leftism and Cultural Marxism. Woke is, instead, a type of thinking that draws on Critical Theory, using the redefinition of words and concepts that appeal to people (compassion, science, patriotism, kindness, or whatever floats your boat) and redefining them in ways that weaponize them against the prevailing culture, or the cultural group at which your assault is aimed.

Woke, in other words, is weaponized memes. (A meme is a spreadable idea, not just a funny photo with an edge.)

I see. Woke people use memes, or something like that. So I went looking for conservative memes on the web, and I came up with a few like Pepe the Frog -- but that's not what Strom means by a meme, that's just a funny image with an edge. What are some conservative spreadable ideas? My search came up with a list of seven from Speaker Mike Johnson: Individual Freedom, Limited Government, The Rule of Law, Peace through Strength, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Markets, and Human Dignity. Aren't those spreadable ideas?

Apparwently Strom doesn't think so. He seems to think people like Tucker and Candace are distinguished by using memes. So I asked Chrome AI mode, "What memes are associated with Tucker Carlson?" It answered,

Memes associated with Tucker Carlson often center on his on-air expressions, specific controversial segments, his firing from Fox News, and recent interviews.

It went on to list examples including The "Tucker Frown/Confused Face" and the "Elmo Laugh", but these are visual or auditory images with an edge, not spreadable ideas like the rule of law. So if Strom thinks Tucker Carlson is woke because he uses memes, I'm having a hard time figuring out what spreadable ideas he's come up with. Tucker Carlson is an image, a preppy schtick and little else; he's in his 50s, which is getting on for a preppie, and he reached his sell-by date at Fox.

So I asked Chrome AI mode, "What memes are associated with Candace Owens?" It answered,

Candace Owens is primarily associated with memes related to the "Blexit" movement and her former affiliation with Turning Point USA. The "Blexit" term, a portmanteau of "black" and "exit," was co-opted by her for a campaign urging African Americans to leave the Democratic Party.

However, neither of these is current; she was Communications Director for Turning Point USA from 2017 to 2019; she formed the Blexit movement in 2018. Right now, all she's doing is feuding with Erika Kirk:

Erika Kirk was slammed by Candace Owens over comments she made about privacy and keeping her late husband's burial site secret despite posting footage of his body and casket online.

Owens, who has been critical of the mother of two in recent weeks, claimed that the TPUSA CEO had the "Meghan Markle Syndrome," a remark that appeared to suggest Erika wanted privacy yet also sought publicity whenever she chose.

Is "Meghan Markle Syndrome" a meme? It's probably more an image with an edge, not what Strom would call a "spreadable idea" redefined against the prevailing culture. But Strom plods on:

What makes Tucker Carlson and many others the "woke right" is their weaponization of the very term "conservative."

When Americans speak of "conservatism," we generally mean Classical Liberalism, although some conservatives have added a Burkean element that is in tension with Classical Liberalism but is mostly compatible. Perhaps someday I will write about the Venn Diagram and where they overlap and where they don't, but for the moment, give me this: "conservatives" believe that rights and moral worth inhere in individuals and that liberty is an essential value. Burkeans would add that societies must develop traditions as well as legal structures to realize a society that we would recognize as "Liberal."

Here he wanders into one of my favorite logical fallacies, hypostatization, treating an abstraction as something that has concrete existence. He picks up "conservatism" and links it to "classical liberalism" and even a "Burkean element", none of which he defines, but they're in tension, though mostly compatible. Sounds like a good counselor could help them work things out, huh? He's off in cloud cuckoo land. But he comes to a breakthrough>

I would argue that Tucker, Candace, the current version of MTG that Beege wrote about earlier today, and most certainly Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes have adopted identities that appeal to the idea of "conservative," but which in fact are not in the least conservative.

How is any of them conservative as of late 2025? Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are fading celebrities desperate to maintain audiences. Carlson in particular has an expensive lifestyle, and it's hard not to think Qatar is helping to subsidize it. Is there any need to multiply entities by bringing conservatism into it? We can talk about Buckley and Burke, but Trump is president, and he's made both Buckley and Burke irrelevant.

By the way, I asked Chrome AI mode about Salem Media's financial performance. Via a link,

Total third-quarter revenue declined 13% on a year-over-year basis to $51.3 million at Salem, reflecting lower broadcast and publishing income following the sale of the company’s Contemporary Christian music stations. But a deeper review of the results reveals bright spots.

Net broadcast revenue decreased 11.6% to $40.7 million, in part due to a $5.9 million impact from station sales. But on a same-station basis, Salem says net broadcast revenue increased by 1.5% in Q3 to $40.2 million. The company says both local station and Salem Radio Network spot advertising revenue declined, in part since the company saw political revenue decline 12% vs. a year ago. But it was made up in part through a $2.1 million increase in broadcast digital sales.

Seems like they could cut costs by consolidating all those websites publishing worthless material. How much do they pay David Strom? I keep thinking about a long e-mail to Salem's CEO.